![\"\"](\"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Sausage600.jpg\")
The China tour story I wrote took a long, winding road to publication. I like to pre-sell any feature-ish story and since we had recently done another big CSC story at That Other Magazine I pitched the China ride to Editor in Chief, Marc Cook. He liked the idea and suggested making the story less about the CSC motorcycle and more about the ride.<\/p>\n
All went swimmingly on the tour but while I was in China That Other Magazine was going through upheaval on every level. I returned to a smoking, charred magazine landscape of fewer, thinner issues and a frequently changing vision for That Other Magazine. I ran the China story past each new editor (in quick succession) they all liked it but the reformatted book had many must-print stories and little space for a long feature on China.<\/p>\n
That Other Magazine went through another major restyle opting for a spare, photo-heavy layout, a cut back to 6 issues a year and hired a platoon of fresh, new writers. I re-re-re-pitched the thing, refusing to believe it was over but like any failed love affair the day came when I realized my blue passion for That Other Magazine had faded to grey.<\/p>\n
Whenever I do a free-riding junket for a motorcycle manufacturer there are no preconditions. I may love or hate their motorcycle but I will write honestly about it. The only thing I can offer in return for their hard-earned money is publicity. My job was to write a story and get it published: I had failed myself, CSC, Joe Berk, my fellow China Riders and Zongshen.<\/p>\n
At this point I pretty much gave up on the China tour and shoved the thing into a dark, dusty corner of my hard drive. I couldn\u2019t stand looking at the story, so much effort that came to naught. Newer challenges awaited writing and I wasn\u2019t going to let the China story drag me down. I moved on.<\/p>\n
Enter this blog and its demanding publishing schedule. While I\u2019m no fountain of content I\u2019ve never written as many words a month as I have since we started ExhaustNotes. The hectic pace and all-consuming need for content has changed my opinion of writing from an art form into a trade. I make stories like I pour concrete. Instead of a failure, the China tour became just another slab. I pitched the thing to Motorcycle.com<\/em> and thankfully they bit. I rewrote the story to reflect the new realities regarding That Other Magazine and the result can be found here: Kung Fu Riding<\/a>.\u00a0 Sorry it took so long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The China tour story I wrote took a long, winding road to publication. I like to pre-sell any feature-ish story and since we had recently done another big CSC story at That Other Magazine I pitched the China ride to Editor in Chief, Marc Cook. He liked the idea and suggested making the story less … Continue reading “Sausage Making”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[235,72,66,89],"tags":[73,30,75],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-china","category-joe-gresh","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","tag-riding-china","tag-rx3","tag-zongshen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2157,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions\/2157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}